The mission of the Air Force is like a highly complex machine. Each piece of the machine is vital to it operating successfully. The E-9A Widget is a very small, yet highly important piece to that machine.

Arnold Engineering Development Complex engineers at the National Full Scale Aerodynamics Complex assisted in recent testing of sub-scale parachutes for the next mission of the Orion spacecraft, Exploration Mission-1.

Embraer announced Jan. 8 it has selected Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower Geared Turbofan™ engine as the exclusive power for its new second generation of the E-Jet aircraft family. Pratt & Whitney is a division of United Technologies Corp. Planned to enter service in 2018, the Embraer E-Jets equipped with PurePower PW1700G and PW1900G engines will…

Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies. The scientists used data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, in which NASA plays an important role. The discovery of an asteroid belt-like band of…

The Lockheed Martin team, awarded a contract by NASA in 2007 to design and build the Solar Ultraviolet Imager for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series, has met the requirements of a Pre-Environmental Review. The review was held in November at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif., by a…

Courtesy photograph Courtesy photograph The first MC-130J to be converted into Air Force Special Operations Commandís newest variant of the gunship, the AC-130J Ghostrider, lands at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Jan. 3, 2013. Modifications to the airframe will be completed in ten months and will be a milestone in the recapitalization of the AC-130H/U…

NATS, the United Kingdom’s leading air traffic control company, has awarded Lockheed Martin a seven-year contract extension to continue support of air traffic management systems based at Swanwick and Prestwick control centers. Under this new extension, Lockheed Martin will also support the NATS flight data processing system. Lockheed Martin’s work with NATS encompasses a diverse…

Starting this month, NASA will send a remotely piloted research aircraft as high as 65,000 feet over the tropical Pacific Ocean to probe unexplored regions of the upper atmosphere for answers to how a warming climate is changing Earth. The first flights of the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment, a multi-year airborne science campaign with a…

General Dynamics awarded $133 million for Abrams Tank production General Dynamics Land Systems has been awarded $132.7 million for the procurement and production of 69 Saudi M1A2 Abrams tanks for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This work is part of a plan by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to upgrade its fleet of tanks….

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed “weather map” yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds. Brown dwarfs form out of condensing gas, as stars do, but lack the mass…

Veterans Last of the 39ers: Great Escape hero who was shot down at the start of the war dies aged 98 Work to begin on unearthing 124 Spitfires buried in Burmese jungle during World War Two History Nazis secretly developed plot to drop radioactive bomb on New York from supersonic space rocket Technology Thunderbird 2…

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Pushing the Boundaries of Propelling Deep Space Missions

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center are advancing the propulsion system that will propel the first ever mission to redirect an asteroid for astronauts to explore in the 2020s. NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission will test a number of new capabilities, like advanced Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP), needed for future astronaut expeditions into deep space, including to Mars.
The Hall thruster is part of an SEP system that uses 10 times less propellant than equivalent chemical rockets. In a recent test, engineers from Glenn and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, using a Glenn vacuum chamber to simulate the space environment, successfully tested a new, higher power Hall thruster design, which is more efficient and has longer life. “We proved that this thruster can process three times the power of previous designs and increase efficiency by 50 percent,” said Dan Herman, Electric Propulsion Subsystem lead.
Hall thrusters trap electrons in a magnetic field and use them to ionize the onboard propellant. The magnetic field also generates an electric field that accelerates the charged ions creating an exhaust plume of plasma that pushes the spacecraft forward. This method delivers cost-effective, safe and highly efficient in-space propulsion for long duration missions. In addition to propelling an asteroid mission, this new thruster could be used to send large amounts of cargo, habitats and other architectures in support of human missions to Mars.
Image Credit: NASA
Michelle M. Murphy (Wyle Information Systems, LLC) Read More

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